I’m writing more for it. I don’t know quite how long it will go. We will see.
Short Story / A Dollar for Hemingway (Analysis)
Tommy had, early in life, developed a skill that would see him safely through all the tedious years of adulthood. When confronted with something he did not find particularly compelling, Tommy could take a deep breath and slowly exhale through a forming half-smile, and be launched into space. He would leap from foot to foot across a dusty moonscape and stare at the far distant earth through an astronaut’s reflective visor.
“Hello, Earth” he would say.
“Hello, Tommy,” The Earth would smilingly reply.
Tommy would prance about the moon in search of miraculous adventure, and he always found it. A silver chord attached him to reality. He became practiced at automatic and encouraging listening forms. When in conversation, Tommy had perfected the chin in palm method of seeming interested, while in fact, only trying to preserve his energy by not having to hold his own head up. A thoughtful glance at the ceiling or floor, a “hmmm,” here and there, and the occasional, “Really?,” were his weapons of deflection. A master of subtle inflection, Tommy could dance in lunar seas while receiving communication via radio contact with Houston. Through this contact, he would direct hand and arm motions as if a puppet master.
On occasion, some conversation or event would drag him kicking, screaming and clawing all the way back from whatever barren yet fruitful landscape he was on. This was usually accomplished by a woman. She would usually be awaiting a response to some demand.
Tommy and that woman sat in his dingy apartment. Tommy, with his chin in his palm, stared through Megan’s forehead. Her lips where moving quickly as she waved her fragile hands about dramatically in front of them.
“Well?!” She demanded.
He blinked, paused, and answered. “Sorry, I was on the moon.“ He said with a smile, already drifting back into zero gravity.
“What?” she replied.
“Nothing,“ now rooted firmly in the world, he decided it a fine time to use a catch all response to prevent an argument, “I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”
“What are we going to do?”
“That’s. . . a good question.”
What are we going to do? He knew what that meant, but could not bring himself to ignore the vast complexities of the question. The woman who had posed this pragmatic dilemma glared at him. In order to not give the impression of ignoring her, he quickly spit out the first thing that came to mind.
“Let’s go to the bookstore.” he threw out in a pseudo-casual style while holding on to the arms of his chair, so as not to float away.
Megan sighed. While Tommy’s sighs where slow and easy sighs of the content, Megan’s were not. They were a vast intake of air through a slim nose, a momentary pause as daggers where glared at the object of attention, then released in a gale from pursed lips. Such sighs have been known to shake the foundations of kingdoms. If Megan enjoyed the bookstore in lapsed religious devotion, Tommy was baptized in the bright colors of book bindings and the sentences of famous authors.
While the two sat in Tommy’s very small apartment, she decided tonight would be their last Friday night. Feeling a bit of sadness, she smiled through her emotions. In her opinion, Tommy needed a mother and a hairbrush. She could not supply either anymore. The process of this internal resolution did not make itself outwardly apparent. A few moments passed without anything being said.
“We could go catch a movie?” Tommy ventured.
Tommy awoke with wondering hands. They wondered and searched through the sheets for the object of his late night affection. Before he opened his eyes, he knew she had left. She had been gone for a while; her side of the bed was cold. It was with the greatest of efforts that Tommy rolled out of bed each day. The ebb and flow of tidal dreams rocked him as if he were an infant every morning. His right hand rested palm up across Megan’s side of the bed as he laid wide awake. He stared at the ceiling in an effort to understand the absence of his demanding bed-mate. As a custom, a man leaves a late sleeping woman wrapped warmly in bed sheets. This inverse situation tugged on Tommy’s wrist and whispered into his ear. He lay there for a still moment.
“Get up and find her drinking a cup of coffee,” he said to himself without speaking.
Moving his leg wide and throwing the comforter to the other side of the bed with a dramatic and regal motion, he prepared. It is hard enough to trudge out of the comfort of a warm bed on a cold morning. Fate would be cruel to force this horror on him with what he feared he would not find in the kitchen. He summoned courage and threw his right arm and leg over his center of gravity. As the force carried him over the side of the bed he swung his head the opposite direction and both feet came to an abrupt halt on the wooden floor. Trapeze artists would have been envious of this sort of dexterity. Tommy sat with elbows planted against his thighs and his shaggy head in his hands. His mind sifted through half remembered erotic dreams and the fact his feet seemed to be frozen to the floor.
“Get up.”
With the greatest of efforts he stood up and shook his head clear. He snatched his rather dingy and threadbare blue robe and put on a pair of oversized sneaker slippers. As he walked by the full length mirror he never got around to hanging, he stole a glance.
“Looking good, kid.” Tommy said aloud.
He walked into his kitchen while running his fingers through his unruly hair. There was no breakfast, no coffee, no cute red head in an oversized t-shirt. There was only a small piece of paper; it was sitting on his kitchen counter.
“Damn.”
Tommy stood for a moment and scratched angrily at his unshaved cheek, then walked behind the counter to make a pot of coffee. He took utmost care to avoid even glimpsing at the small piece of paper that stood high like a black monolith. It would surely foretell his doom. He decided that if he were to not actually get this message, nothing would change. He could have a cup of hot coffee in his sneaker slippers, eat a banana, and go to the bookstore. This philosophical conundrum was interrupted by the ding of his microwave. The noise announced the status of a slice of last night’s left over pizza. With a shrug he pulled the pizza out of the microwave by the dampened paper towel it was sitting on and walked back into his bedroom. He shielded his vision of the doom note with his coffee mug.
Chewing noisily, Tommy was very happy with the fact that torn up jeans had, by some miracle, come into style. He stood in front of his closet and pondered over the three or so pairs of pants he owned. Homeless chic was what he was best at; it was all he knew. Fully dressed and having given himself a thumbs-up in the un-hung mirror, he walked out of the apartment and into the world, and It was very bright.
As Tommy walked along the sidewalk, he ran through his list of tasks to accomplish: pick up Watson from Dave’s, check his overdrawn bank account, finagle a way into covering said bank account, go to work, and reach enlightenment. He therefore decided to visit to the bookstore.
A number of years prior, Tommy found himself in desperate need of a book-mark in one of the large, chain bookstores where he incidentally could not afford to buy books. He sat with a gratis cup of black coffee, the origin of which brought him no pride. Reached deep into his pockets, he scoured the linings of his jeans. Nothing there. He grudgingly decided to pull out his wallet and see if he had anything he could slide into the proper page of “Men Without Women.” He splayed his weather-torn, leather wallet open and stared dismally into its yawning maw. There was a single green bill and a number of random membership discount-cards which had yet to pay themselves off. Tommy tossed the idea of dog-earing about, then decided against it. While he might be a destroyer of books he cared for, another may treasure them. He followed this vein to its only logical conclusion and pulled his sole dollar bill from the wallet. He winked at it, said good luck, and stuck it into page one hundred and two. He smiled broadly.
“A reward for the well read, if you find it before I finish” he thought.
Sipping his coffee, Tommy nodded at the girl serving coffee and went to replace his book. As he conspiratorially slid the book back into the bookshelf he looked up to the ceiling. Surely Hemingway would not mind this game, perhaps he should have started with Steinbeck. John surely would appreciate the idea. Hemingway was known to be a jerk.
To date, Tommy had spread over fifty dollars throughout the cities random large book stores. He did not keep a list, for that would interfere with the nature of the contest. If he forgot that he had been reading “Slapstick” by Vonnegut, then that was his own fault and woe unto him. Besides, he was never more delighted than when he found one of his own dollars in a book he had forgotten about. In the beginning, his rules were very simple. It must be a classic or a modern book with presumed classic potential. It must be somewhat unknown and out of the ordinary. He was not going to waste a fortune reading “The Davinci Code.” He was not going to read it either way for that matter.
His game had slowly evolved into a different animal entirely. Each time one of his partially read books was placed back onto a shelf, he would close his eyes and dream. A shapeless figure would drift through the aisles, perusing. Only at the last minute would the form catch the title of a half forgotten book and say to him or herself.
“Where do I know that book from?”
The shape would swirl and shift inside of Tommy’s mind and gain a slightly human figure as it reached out and placed a fingertip on the top of the book. A man, a woman, a professor, a student, a CEO or a bum would pull the book towards them, top first. They remembered the name of the author from somewhere. Holding the spine of the book, they would thumb through it as if to garner some recognition from the blur of pages. And then the Father of the country would be there.
“Hi, how are you?” George Washington would ask.
“Why are you here?” the professor might ask.
“What a waste of a dollar,” The CEO would state.
“Yes, A dollar!” The out-of-work, and homeless professor or businessman would most certainly declare.
The thrill of these day dreams drove Tommy to expand this game into heights of twisting and perilous detail. It was no longer dollars in books he was reading, but written messages in books he already had. Interesting pictures went into books he had not read, but knew the author. Fast food receipts were destined for Marx and a union pamphlet for modern conservative political pundits. Always extraordinarily careful, he would not allow the employees or his fellow customers to observe his intrigues. He would stalk through the aisles of Books-A-Million as a predatory assassin bent on killing of the King of France in order to leave a message in “The Three Musketeers.”
It said “Keep reading, it gets better.”
Other times, Tommy would stride powerfully and scowl threateningly at children in order to drop a slip into “Treasure Island.”
It read “No really, you can stop now. It doesn’t get any better.”
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hatchettmanrox reviewed Version 2 -
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Wow… I loved this… In the beginning, where Megan asks Tommy what they are going to do, and he thinks to himself that the question was limitless. I really enjoyed that view… Good job… :)
-Gio
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Underscore79 reviewed Version 2 -
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I really liked the first section. I fell right into the moment. However, when I got to the second section, my mind started to wander. For some reason, the narrative lost me in the third paragraph. The description just got a little over the top—horror, trapeze artists, etc. There’s got to be a better narrative there that fits this character better, and makes him seem more like a person than a character a writer is trying to feed me. The last few paragraphs in that section were better, but still riding that line. The final section was more like the second.
Although, I did enjoy finding out about his bookstore intrigue. It’s an interesting twist. Therefore, rather than pointing small grammar issues, I’m just going suggest the one big one that was very distracting to me as a reader--narrative development. I had this image of a guy in my mind when I began the story, but then narrative just no longer sounded like him. Originally, he seemed like a flighty but good-natured sort of guy--a dreamer--someone I might know. However, the narrative just got so droll after that and he became a caricature of a person. I just didn’t believe that if I was in this guy’s head, he would sound like that--not even remotely. So, in my opinion, it’s that voice that needs to be refined. As a reader, I felt a bit let down because I identified with him so much in the beginning.
Let me know if you revise this as I would like to read it if you give it a new direction.
teaddub reviewed Version 2 -
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Well then. This is a great idea, and an interesting premise. I do like to talk a little about conventions, and this was not too badly done. I felt that you have some recurring issues as I started the piece, and then decided this is just your style. They were not real errors, just an unusual syntax. This is, as I said, not necessarily a bad thing, but it was confusing at first. I didn’t really get it until my second reading. To be honest, it is only for review purposes that there was a second reading. I would have given up on this style early, except for that.
You do have talent and imagination. In a larger work the style would become easier as the reader goes deeper into the story. I am a little confused (again) about the relevance of the two parts; the first part in a break-up with a girl, then the second part where we learn of his “hobby” in bookstores. I don’t see how they come together yet, but again, in a larger work this may become apparent. In a short story, it really becomes two unrelated stories.
Your character development is marginal, outside the uncaring and disconnected character of your protagonist, Tommy. Megan was fairly flat as a character, but she didn’t last long, so maybe she wasn’t important. Your dialog was only fairly engaging when inanimate objects and imaginary people were the subjects of at least one side of the conversation, again, the dialog with Megan left something to be desired, and again, maybe for a bit part that was unimportant.
In the meantime your treatment of the dialogs Tommy had with an imaginary earth, the found dollars, and the imaginary finders, and of course, himself, helps the reader get to know this somewhat lonesome character even better. As he lives vicariously through the lives of his dollars, and the books he reads we see how he has isolated himself from emotional upset by refusing to interact with the people around him. He just pretends to get involved, but is completely disconnected, with the exception of his silver thread.
This character may be able to learn something from a critical review of Pink Floyds “The Wall.” He is not so different from the protagonist in that piece, Pink. Great story, are you planning on expanding this, or will it eventually be just a part of something bigger? I would like to see where this goes.
dukelemoyne reviewed Version 2 -
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This is a cool idea. I can picture a creature driven to do what Tommy does. I think there is a novel in this. We need to know more about Tommy. And Megan; she obviously put up with his Mitty-esque qualities for some time, so that makes her interesting.
A few problems:
If you insist on keeping this a short story, you have a POV conflict. The whole story is from Tommy’s POV until you assume Megan’s POV toward the end of the first passage.
”...as daggers “were” glared…”
”...by the…paper towel it “sat” on…”
”...decided to visit [to—delete] the bookstore…”
”...throughout the “city’s”...book stores.”
Great read. Thanks a lot.
MarcyBoBarcy reviewed Version 2 -
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This is revolutionary. This is splendid. I’m not sure if this could be made into a novel, but I’m sure if you elaborated on the girls of his life and why they keep leaving him then it would be wonderfully characterized. My favorite line:
“Fully dressed and having given himself a thumbs-up in the un-hung mirror, he walked out of the apartment and into the world, and It was very bright.”
This is everything people look for. I also love the title. I knew I wanted to read it just from that.
derekosborne reviewed Version 2 -
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This is much better, much easier to follow. Not sure how much the new layout contributes to that, but the transition from being in the apartment to being in the bookstore is much cleaner and allows the reader to warm up to Tommy and, in the end, see him as both tragic and likeable. He does not seem so self centered in this draft, or at least he now appears flawed rather than useless. I did a word count analysis and it appears you have shortened the piece by 26 words. Must have been good choices. Of course, this is the second read so that does influence my overall comprehension. Still, nice story.
Once small correction, I think its “Father of our country”, not “Father of the country”
asiantofu reviewed Version 2 -
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I like the idea in the second part of the story, but it is difficult to understand how that correlates with the time spent talking about Tommy’s girlfriend leaving him. Perhaps adding some more detail or simply a paragraph of explanation between the two parts of the story could enable a more comprehensible transition.
jpatts reviewed Version 2 -
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Your transition between the surreal, floating state of daydreams into the harsh reality of a lover’s argument is what I enjoyed the most. It seems that this man is lost in his imagination. His imagination is what helps him cope with reality, or at least thats what I’m getting from this piece.
There are small details that could be polished, such as the repetition of ”...With the greatest of efforts…”
but those are small things. All in all, I enjoyed this and, sadly, I must admit, he reminds me of myself; a man trying to escape reality through a bookstore.
smitisan reviewed Version 2 -
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I really like this story, sort of a Walter Mitty kind of thing. The irony, that here’s this fellow indulging in all kinds of heroic dreams while in fact he is little else but a furtive, weaseling, undercover book critic(!), is delicious. One thing I would change is taking out those few moments we spend inside Megan’s head, even if that means sacrificing the line about “a mother and a hairbrush.” The story’s about what goes on in his head, and should be left there. That she leaves him after a sympathy bone is not too surprising, given what we know of him. I got lost a couple of times: the ding of the microwave I wasn’t prepared for. I would have liked a detail or two of those “interesting pictures,” just to flesh out how Tommy relates to authors. You get a bit wordy at times: “Trapeze artists would envy such dexterity.” But overall, this was a fine read. Thank you.
mothers_fallen_angel reviewed Version 2 -
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Lacks an efficient story-line, needs more detail and descriptive words
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